The end of a dream

I should be in bed.  I have to get up early to teach a class, but at the same time I kinda want to write down all the stuff I am feeling and get it out of me.  So, here goes.

Last week we said goodbye to a dream.  Our dream house.  We sold it, and moved back to our old house that we never sold when we moved to this house.

I loved this house.  We put our hearts and souls into it.  We sweat every detail (Lane more than I).  We put wayyyyy more money than we should have into it also.  It was beautiful, there is no doubt about it, and I'm really not trying to brag, it just was.  Our friends called it Cook's Castle.  It did have a beautiful stone ballustrade that kinda made it look that way.

However, at the same time, this house kind of was a reminder of the end of a different dream - one of a healthy, happy, easy life.

We broke ground in June of 2007 on this house.  I will never forget Lane and I were standing in the framed house in September.  We were trying to decide where light fixtures and plugs, etc would go.  We had the plans out, and were discussing it all when we got a call from the surgeon who did the biopsy on Lane's lymphnodes.  He told us we had Follicular Lymphoma.  Yes, it was cancer.  It was a Friday afternoon around 1 p.m.  We raced home to the computer to see what the heck Follicular Lymphoma was.  We called the Dr. office and of course  got a recording.  We were so shocked, confused, and in tears over what we were reading on the internet about it.  I felt like our world came crashing in that day.

Thus began our cancer journey, and the end of our perfect dream life.  We wanted to stop the building of the house, but we couldn't.  We wanted to stop the nightmare of cancer, but we couldn't.  Control of our lives was taken from our hands.

Now, 3 years later, and still battling cancer, we decided the home isn't worth it.  In August we found out the cancer was back, and it was then that Lane said we needed to sell the house and cut back on our life. I agreed, and thus, the sale of our dream.

It hurts.  I hate having to leave my little Utopia where all the neighbors are great, and have kids for my kids to play with and I have the tennis court right next door.

I hate knowing that someone else will be living in my house with all the stuff I chose and all the "cool" stuff we did to it.  They will never appreciate it the way we did.

But,  life and its challenges can teach you that some things aren't as important as others.  Lower stress for Lane is what we need right now.  He has to gear up for a 3rd go of Chemotherapy.  He'll be tough, he'll be strong, and he won't have to work quite so hard now.

So, we closed the door on that dream, and hopefully will open doors to better ones.